1. Field
The disclosure relates in general to a method for providing an electronic program guide, multimedia reproduction system, and computer readable storage medium.
2. Description of the Related Art
Transmitting videos via the broadband Internet is currently a prevalent alternative way for watching videos or television programs. The smart televisions, nowadays, can play Internet videos or Internet TV.
Many sources of television channels arise currently, such as video programs provided by a number of Internet video providers (such as YouTube) as well as the digital television channels. It is important that how the programs that someone wants to watch can be found as fast as possible. Regarding this, electronic program guides (EPG) are available but presented in a fixed arrangement: its vertical axis taken as indicating channels and horizontal axis taken as indicating programs of the corresponding channels, arranged according to the program time. After keyword searching the EPG is done, the search result is listed item by time in a vertical manner. The search result sometimes is too long and inconvenient to find the program one wants. In addition, for the well-known website YouTube, the searching is also performed for one condition per time and the search result is also shown item by item in a vertical manner.
In addition, with diversified contents and types provided by the Internet, a relaxed atmosphere of enjoying watching the television as originally intended may instead turn out to be serious and complicated. In this way, such a television causes difficulties of usage in a family or group and fails to satisfy the needs of different users, for example, those who are unfamiliar with operating a computer.